Non-Fiction Book Review: My Time – the autobiography of Bradley Wiggins.

Like most toddlers I rode a trike, then a two-wheeler on which I passed my cycling proficiency, to be rewarded with a ‘big girl’s bike’. 

Brought up in Cambridge (UK) in the fens where the world is flat, cycling was the norm: I cycled to school, I cycled to town and later to lectures and with friends to country pubs, to the river for picnics - a bike was a natural extension of the body. Back when my father was a student, bicycles were left unlocked around town so that students could borrow and return them. Happy days. 

My Time  is a bumpy bike ride from working class obscurity to a knighthood for winning the Tour de France – the first British cyclist to do so – and gold at the Olympics in the same year, 2012. I was in UK that year and the atmosphere was electric, the summer of Wiggomania. 

Bradley Wiggins writes in a straightforward style, his own voice, and his co-author remains true to the champion’s natural idiom and often raw approach to relating anecdotes. His journey is a classic arc from disappointment and public humiliation, when he suffered a personal crisis and flopped at the Tour de France in 2010 - just one more failure in a disastrous season of big races - to the joy of his final double triumph in 2012. 

The memoir is a fascinating insight into competitive cycling: brave, honest and appreciative of family, friends, colleagues, both amateurs and professionals, indeed everyone who helped Wiggins to realise his goal after wrong turns, crashes, injuries, bad press and clashes of personality. In his book, as on the track, Wiggins is ever the consummate sportsman and antagonists are fairly treated. Throughout his learning curve, he overcame self-destructive habits of drinking, tantrums and unreliability and did the hard psychological and physical work to grow into a sober, dependable, loyal and generous team member. The training and self-discipline necessary to become a world class cyclist are described in gruelling detail to leave the reader both exhausted and exhilarated. 

This memoir is not only a sporting quest crammed with heroic feats in the face of danger, obstacles, rivals and enemies, but also a story about his family, a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood; Wiggins’s vehicle of choice: a bike. If you love cycling you’ll love this book and, if you’re not a cyclist, then this armchair ride may turn you on to the sport. Go Wiggo!